Heavenheadedness

Paris-Brest-Paris 1948

I thought of Daisy. Years ago, in the golden, providential era of the present tense, when marijuana and LSD, for me, were steeped in a dazzle of socialization, in a leafy green village upstate, and peyote and mescaline, for me, were steeped in a dreamy introspection and differentiating perspective, out on the plains, it was only the latter that could be taken seriously and for which I have a nostalgic affection. Never fulfilling enough to become a habit, later on, in 1987, I found a more useful expedient. Paris-Brest-Paris is a 750 mile bicycle randonnee (Audax Club Parisien), formerly a professional race. Riders of modest ability or weak hearts ride straight through, from Monday 4AM to Thursday 11PM without sleep, to finish within the ninety hour limit. To sleep deprivation is attributed a hundred manners of psychological distortion, and scientific studies have articulated a fabulous array of case studies, effects, and measures relating to insight, savantism, and ontology. I prefer to call this time-travel. Riding back to Paris, having not slept, I came to understand that we would be routed through Versailles. Along with the certainty of breath and blood and growing old, cycling on those drives and allees remains one of the only unbelievable wonders to which I refer myself that did not actually happen.